Reckless disregard for due process got the gov't into the Guantánamo mess, yet they keep thinking more reckless disregard will get them OUT of it

Judge Lamberth in 2009 (spelling doesn't seem to be C-SPAN's
strong suit) -- he didn't sound like a happy camper yesterday.

"It is a sad reality that in the ten years since the first detainees were brought to Guantanamo Bay not a single one has been fully tried or convicted of any crime. Despite this, the Government has fought to deny detainees the ability to challenge their indefinite detentions through habeas proceedings. In a litany of rulings, this Court and the Supreme Court have affirmed that the Federal courts are open to Guantanamo detainees who wish to prove that their indefinite detentions are illegal."

-- D.C. District Court Chief Judge Royce Lamberth, slapping down the latest gov't end run around due process for Guantánamo detainees

by Ken

Ouch! Chief Judge Lamberth sure doesn't sound like a happy camper, does he?

This whole chunk of his ruling is quoted in Michael Doyle's McClatchy report on the judge's slapdown, "Judge sides with Guantanamo detainees." To get us up to speed on the story, here's how Doyle's account begins:

Using strong words, a federal judge has rejected the Obama administration's efforts to change the rules under which Guantanamo Bay detainees are represented by lawyers.

Denouncing what he called "an illegitimate exercise of Executive power," U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth said in his 32-page ruling that an existing 2008 court order will continue to guide detainees' access to counsel, even in cases where there is not an active habeas corpus petition.

"It is clear that the government had no legal authority to unilaterally impose a counsel-access regime, let alone one that would render detainees’ access to counsel illusory," Lamberth declared.

It's just a shame that the U.S. District Court's powers don't extend to punishing the gov't thugs and/or legal cretins who have been burdening the federal courts with their flagrantly abusive perversion of both the military and the civilian legal systems. I'm thinking along the lines of someday -- actually, tomorrow would work fine for me! -- having all the officials of the Bush and Obama administrations who've participated in the perversion of the administration of justice rounded up and dumped in the hold of a cargo ship for transport to their own wing at Gitmo, where they will be treated, not merely under the flagrantly illegal and unconstitutional conditions they have instituted for their prisoners, but better still, under the very worst conditions they've attempted to impose, including all those already struck down by Judge Lamberth's court and the U.S. Supreme Court.

The net effect would be de facto permanent incarceration with essentially no contact with the outside world. Boo-hoo.

It can be argued that some, at least, of those U.S. officials have acted not out of a will to criminally subvert, or to cover up a history of governmental criminal subversion, but simply out of their own sniveling incompetence. Fair enough! I'm not sure that's exactly excuplatory, but there should be adequate opportunity for them to make their case at, er, some point --to, um, somebody, although the only somebodies they'll ever have access to are the ones who put them there, and those somebodies have a powerful interest in making sure their victims are never heard from. And don't forget, under the most extreme theories advanced by the U.S. injustice authorities, it may well constitute an intolerable breach of national security even to tell them why they're there!

Not to worry, though. During their essentially permanent stays at Gitmo, the U.S. injustice officials will be treated . . . well, with all the consideration they wanted to extend to their prisoners, which is to say pretty much none. Fortunately, they won't have to worry about outright torture, unless some unnamed functionary thinks they would benefit from being tortured.

LET'S TAKE A MOMENT HERE TO REFLECT
ON THE CONCEPT OF "DUE PROCESS"

If the actual Gitmo detainees had arrived there via a rigorous process of investigation and lawful detention, they would still be entitled to due process. This is what we as Americans pretend to believe in. But the reality is that overwhelmingly those people wound up in this inescapable black hole through a diabolical combination of bad luck and military and law-enforcement dishonesty and ineptitude -- dishonesty and ineptitude that have also made it virtually impossible to try even the legitimately implicated defendants in anything resembling an actual legal procedure. It's almost funny. In the cases of the minuscule percentage of the detainees who are actually still suspected of committing some sort of crimes, the record of abusive detention minimizes the possibility of actually pressing legal cases in court.

The fact is, however, that most of the detainees should never have been detained, and even in the case of those for whom there may once have been some reason for further scrutiny, the grounds for suspicion have mostly fallen apart. But because of the government's need to cover all those exposed butts, hardly any of the detainees have much hope of release anytime soon. And this is also almost funny: How many of the detainees who had no connection to terrorism before they were shanghaied into the system can be expected, if they're finally released, to head for their nearest terrorist recruiting office?

Of course the career butt-coverers have powerful allies among right-wing pols who are either (once again) too stupid or too dishonest to acknowledge the monumental, probably irrecoverable botch we have made of this whole situation. And for a public that has embraced thuggery and imbecility as virtues, the magic words "national security" cover all sins.

IF YOU'RE CURIOUS WHAT EXACTLY THE
GOV'T TRIED TO GET AWAY WITH THIS TIME . . .

Here's Michael Doyle's explanation:

The Obama administration has sought to impose a new requirement that detainees' attorneys sign a "memorandum of understanding" in order to meet with their clients. Six detainees challenged the new requirement, which covers those who no longer have an active or pending habeas petition.

The MOU, Lamberth noted, strips counsel of their “need to know” designations, and explicitly denies counsel access to all classified documents or information which counsel had “previously obtained or created” in pursuit of a detainee’s habeas petition. Counsel can obtain access to their own classified work product only if they can justify their need for such information.

"At its heart," Lamberth wrote, "this case is about whether the Executive or the Court is charged with protecting habeas petitioners’ right to access their counsel."

Well, yes, that's the legal heart of the case. But Judge Lamberth himself made it clear that the real heart of the matter is larger. Let's look again at what he wrote:

It is a sad reality that in the ten years since the first detainees were brought to Guantanamo Bay not a single one has been fully tried or convicted of any crime. Despite this, the Government has fought to deny detainees the ability to challenge their indefinite detentions through habeas proceedings. In a litany of rulings, this Court and the Supreme Court have affirmed that the Federal courts are open to Guantanamo detainees who wish to prove that their indefinite detentions are illegal.

There oughtta be a law!

Right-wing demagogues like to pretend that Gitmo detainees are there for a reason, and are being treated with more consideration than is called for even by such quaint principles as the Geneva conventions, and in any case terrorism can only be dealt with by "national security" procedures that override the mere tenets of law enforcement. Once again this right-wing demagogues are either too stupid or too dishonest to know or acknowledge that the most effective rooting out of terrorists has been accomplished by competent and vigorous law enforcement.

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